“You are more powerful than I had expected, Ascendant.”
“And you look to have relied solely on that lot to have the success that you currently have. Never thought to consider their flaws and attempt to alleviate them via means other than those solely provided by the otherworldly demons?” Wei Yi asked, looking to a small group of people that did not look to belong in the district at all, wearing clothing that she was able to recognise as being rather similar to what the otherworldly demons recognised as ‘modern’ clothing, “By the way, you lot, don’t know if you’ve heard, but that’s a general term not intended to label you as villainous. You merely impact the world greatly with a single action, often without knowing it, and I consider that to be rather dangerous given the power that some of you end up possessing.”
“W-We did get told about that, but… uh…” the man that replied quickly turned away, before turning all the way to face away from her as he tried to make himself look as small as possible.
Most of his otherworldly companions joined him, although a few were able to keep looking straight and facing her without making themselves any smaller. From a brief glance at them, she was aware that they had a higher cultivation and must have encountered some danger prior to ending up in the district, as they would not endure her gaze so easily.
“There were flaws, but I had truly underestimated the full abilities of those from beyond the district. You have impressed me, Ascendant, and your fellow… Arbiters, did you call them? Yes, they have done well enough too.”
“Don’t pretend that all of this is under your control, Patriarch. This is not, and you don’t even know how I destroyed that overlord orb. As such, skip all of this arbitrary chatter and tell me whether you will bring me to the spatial stabilisation point and contribute what you have to reunifying Yi City and opposing the Greats. Given their minimal presence here, and the fact that you are openly using otherworldly equipment, you must not be too keen on them either.”
“No, I am not ‘keen’ on the Great Families. That being said, your actions are reckless.”
“Oh, do stop already. Reckless? Your enormous fucking army was reckless, and you are lucky that I was present to stop it, otherwise countless people and talents would be slaughtered simply because you fail to look out of the figurative window onto the outside of your district.”
“I-”
“I’m not finished. You are not the first to call me reckless, but trust me, that is very much an understatement. I dare to oppose the Greats, I will fight the Primordial Deities if they ever awaken, and there are threats beyond the Planar Continents that you know little of. If they appear, I shall fight them as well, and unlike you, I will not allow people to sacrifice their minds simply because I need power!” she exclaimed, looking back to the otherworldly demons, “All of them have an azure light within their otherworldly gift that will eat away at their sanity. It must be removed.”
“And so we return to the topic of sacrifice-”
“Indeed, we do. I wish to attain something, so I will do what I must. To put it simply, leaving people with such a thing to affect their minds is in direct opposition to my goals, so if you are not happy with other explanations, consider this one,” she said, “I know that they have cultivated, which means that you have simply allowed people to begin to lose their minds and become threats to themselves and those around them simply because you wanted to be the one to prevail.”
“And you?”
“I am getting tired of these kinds of questions that ignore my words and merely try to flip thing around on me. That being said, if I could be sure that someone else would do exactly what I need them to, I would let them do it. Good enough for you?”
“… Indeed, I have been foolish. I will not continue this, then. You have given this more thought than I have, so any more will simply make a fool of me for no good reason,” the Ju Patriarch admitted, sighing and weakening his stance for a moment before promptly straightening his back and continuing, “You want the spatial stabilisation point, and the district does have a few. What will you give me?”
“Taking advantage of the fact that I did not wish to destroy the automatons?”
“Yes, I am. You are similarly taking advantage of the fact that I am not merely fighting for the sake of conflict, so I do not see any reason not to do so.”
“Aren’t you a clever one? I am glad that you have the time to bargain and debate when the entirety of the world is in danger of being completely drained of planar energy… but you know that, as does everyone in the district, but you think that this kind of thing is permissible, as do I. In fact, you would say that I would demand the exact same kind of thing in your position, wouldn’t you?” Wei Yi asked, prompting the Patriarch to nod.
“It looks like you are. We could be negotiating already, but you are instead preaching.”
“I was not wrong then. What do you want?”
“Resources, manpower, the connections formed by your gateways, and assistance with certain issues that the Ju District has been facing for some time. Assistance in the defence against the Free Tribes of the West, as they call themselves, that live up to the north and occasionally invade our territory.”
“Long list.”
“I could make it far longer. This is the bare minimum that I wish to discuss, and the bare minimum that our district requires from you.”
Wei Yi rolled her eyes, finding the confident stance with which he was speaking to be rather amusing. So far as she was able to tell, even the current Ping Patriarch was likely able to match him in terms of power, and so the current army would be able to defeat him and the automaton horde without much difficulty with enough time. Provided that she delayed for long enough with her words, as she had already been doing to a certain extent, she could recover all of her energy and make use of a powerful enough technique to clear everything in one go as the current conquering status of the district was rising with every moment of confidence on her part and failing on the part of the Ju Patriarch.
Still, she understood his behaviour, and might not have been too different had she lived a life akin to his own, so there was no point in reprimanding him, especially when everything he had spoken about so far would be provided to him even if he didn’t mention it.
“From everything that you have said, I-”
Her eyes suddenly widened as she nearly collapsed, clutching an area near her heart as an incredible pain surged throughout her entire body. It was nothing like the sequelae from abusing the Dao of Law, which she had long gotten used to, but instead something akin to damage to the soul, as if someone tore an enormous gash within it and was taking the opportunity to crawl inside.
Without any care for what it looked like to the others, she identified the source, and instantly appeared at a spot some distance away from their current negotiation grounds.
“What are you doing, Ascendant?”
“The Great Families are attacking. We will do all of this later, don’t you worry!” she replied, opening the gateway with a flick of her hand before pushing the gateway out to be as large as she could possibly make it.
This time, she was not afraid to display the interior of the Kong Prison Realm, for what had affected her could only be show to the others if she did this. Her seeming injury did not come from her own body, despite what it had felt like, but could instead be seen inside of the spatial realm in the form of an enormous tear within the starry and nebulae-filled sky, revealing an overpowering and sickly white light from which a small group emerged, strange fluctuations of light occurring around them.
Beside the sudden display of such a place, most gazes instantly locked onto that tear, and onto the people coming out from within, the task being made easier by the gateway being opened to the edge of the prison realm. The clothes of the people were sufficiently ordinary to not stand out on a casual glance, but when someone knew their identity, they immediately became a sign of that very identity that was only made more obvious by the presence of the mirages that hovered around them – or, in the eyes of the Ascendant, who had destroyed a number of such things before, the anchors that floated around every member of the Great Families.
“Your automaton army is going to be used for defence everywhere else!” she provided one last word to the Ju Patriarch before she moved all of the automatons to the edges of the Yi City Web’s territory around her other districts, then leapt into the prison realm, “Arbiters, with me!”
As she did so, she could feel the power of the spatial realm rise slightly from the new connection to her portion of the Yi City Web, and with it, all of the weapons brought it from the Ju District battlefield had enough energy in the air to be fired at a regular speed without needing to give them more than a minute to recover. Her own strength was slightly higher as well, but none of that mattered when the spatial realm was forcefully locked onto and the Greats looked to be coming from whatever domain they occupied.
“Yi Shi Ming, the Four Cardinal Beasts array-”
“Is not ready! It is not functioning at a proper level just yet!”
“How long do you need? I can’t beat all of them away if they bring even one of the seventh realm members into the area!”
“Two minutes at most! I should be able to seal off the space to a certain extent then!”
The Ascendant didn’t bother saying anything, as it would do nothing to benefit either of them. The spatial spirit needed to be able to focus, as she wasn’t immediately able to focus on everything without any issues with her attention just because she was no longer human, and she needed to get onto opposing the invading forces and ensuring that they wouldn’t have the chance to damage anything.
As such, she glanced to the various Patriarchs that entered and passed along a series of instructions, ideas and techniques for all of them that they could make use of to be more effective than they currently were. They were all impressive, but against the second generation of the Greats, their power was not going to be quite enough to fully push them back. Against the first generation… well, there was no point of even mentioning that. The Greats that were at the seventh realm were entirely invincible to the Patriarchs unless they were in their home district and making use of something like the array the previous Ping Patriarch had used.
“Hold them back, I will try to push them back out of the tear. Go!”
She didn’t bother to hold back her killing will state, either, so all of her killing intent was immediately manifested upon her body all the way from her left foot to the left side of her face. Some might have had an issue with it, but her words fortunately contained enough urgency for them to rush straight to the front lines a moment before Wei Yi did the exact same with her power of the spatial realm, appearing only a few metres away from the tear in space.
When she appeared, the Greats also saw her, and they instantly brought up their anchors to guard themselves against attack.
At the front of the invading team, she saw only the second generation members, amongst whom she noticed Luo Fu, Bai Chao and Ping Fu, who looked to be particularly unhappy with her appearance. The second one, Bai Chao, was calmest and stepped forward with a confident smile on his ugly face.
“So, this is where you were hiding-”
Before he had even the slightest chance to finish, the Titanic Conqueror was already up and throwing everything it had in their direction, while Wei Yi manifested her Obliteration energy at her hands and rushed into punching range, intending to amplify her attacks via her physical force and her mental energy at the same time, ensuring that damage was done to them.
The man looked surprised, but at the same time, all of the invaders so far arranged themselves into position and clapped their palms together, a pure planar energy surrounding them and quickly blocking her advance, even partially extinguishing the powerful blaze contained within her Obliteration energy. Their hands were only together for a moment, as the instant after, they all directed their attacks towards her, manifesting various beams and planar constructs that all charged right towards her, some colliding before any kind of barrier could be placed.
All of them fell upon the Armour Forming energy that enveloped her, bouncing off and leaving only their physical impacts to be afraid of, which promptly threw her into the ground and forced her to regain her footing.
“We seek to improve the world, so we would never stay idle, bastard!” Bai Chao exclaimed.
“Enough of your bullshit! Die already!” she ignored their words as she called upon the power of her anchor and detonated a series of her searing marks, empowering the attacks of the Titanic Conqueror and her together. The former threw out several chunks of ice seeped with poison that crashed upon the area where the Greats stood, filling the ground beneath them with runes that brimmed with Obliteration energy, and gave her room to condense a more recent technique.
Countless railgun rails formed all around them, igniting from the sheer amount of energy forced into them as she wanted to make sure that they would not get out alive.
They shot into the arrangement of the Greats, but before all of that could hit, a flaming hand burst out through the spatial tear and shielded the group with seemingly no effort at all, with every collision exposing a trace of metal underneath that only seemed to be tempered by the strikes. It was as if the hand was merely taking advantage of her attacks, with them having no threat to it at all and thus being something that was only advantageous to it. Given the trace of many anchors and the obvious support of the Great Families, there was no question of which kind of person was responsible for the hand, even if the exact identity was unclear.
Given the strength of the hand, she had an idea of which generation it came from, but that was not a positive in the slightest. It meant that she had to hurry up and force the Greats out of the spatial realm as quickly as she possible could if she wanted to keep the Kong Prison Realm to herself.
‘And yet, all of this has used up a few seconds at most…’
The Patriarchs that fought on the side were only able to draw the attention of two second generation members each without endangering their lives. Even then, they were barely able to put a dent into the defences of those that had not taken position in the defensive technique that gave the Ascendant quite a bit of trouble. While they were able to occupy one another in this fashion, they were achieving very little.
As the hand receded, she made use of the fact that their current attacks weren’t quite enough to breach her defences to plant both feet firmly in the sand and channel the energy within her body that was barely able to recover after the previous battle into the world around her, manifesting the circle of Eclipse Ire. Within it, she embedded Obliteration energy, the concept her Dao, and even the concept of the Black Sun to a certain extent, limited by the fact that the technique was not quite compatible with the notion of destruction that was contained within the base technique.
While the Greats prepared their own techniques, the Ire circle quickly drew upon the energy into the Kong Prison Realm and grew, reaching the edge of the defensive field generated by the strange arrangement of the Great Family members. The moment that they came into contact, countless blackened crimson lightning bolts shot out from her body and locked onto that barrier.
Their collision did not destroy the defensive layer, doing very little to it, but the Great Family members visibly trembled when a number of the lightning bolts fell upon it. It had some effect, which was enough.
Since she was able to affect them, she naturally increased the quantity of energy she was pouring into the technique, causing the third and fourth circles to form rapidly, all while the phase of the moon within them grew. In the sky, a sun and moon appeared from within the distant cosmos, shining past all of the powerful nebulae and the other celestial bodies to appear close to the scene of the battle, at the very edge of the spatial tear that continued to let out sickening light from the world beyond. The sun and moon alike slowly shifted to shine upon the Greats, who shared a glance before shifting their position into some other arrangement.
However, the moment that they did so, she performed a motion with her right hand and forced a series of totems to rise out from the ground, amplified by her home ground advantage to be larger and capable of channelling even more energy throughout their structure. In all of them, she embedded her Obliteration technique, and made them all target the centre of the Great Family member arrangement the moment that it looked to be weakest due to their movements.
Thus, at that instant, multiple dozen blackened crimson beams met with the blast of moonlight and dawn light fired via her Eclipse Ire, the energies colliding with one another in an explosion of absolute destruction.
Naturally, she had applied the slight understanding she had attained from the collision of the overlord orb’s orange beam and her own Obliteration beam, but she did also incorporate a concept that she had observed from the Bai District’s strange space. The figure that wielded something akin to her own Obliteration energy had used a number of odd techniques, and from them, she was able to extract a few concepts that she promptly used to amplify the effect of every beam through one burst upon their intersection.
Somehow, even that wasn’t enough to breach the barrier that the Greats had set up, but the force was enough to knock them loose from their arrangement, giving her the perfect opportunity to point towards the spatial tear with her left hand and exclaim.
“Exit!”
Her Command of Law took effect instantly, causing the formation of her foes, and her own body alike, to be pushed towards the spatial tear from which they had emerged. To be sure that she got all of them, she did not bother restraining her power of Law and affected every single soul that she could, as she and the others could get out of wherever they ended up easily enough once the battle was over, but the Greats would struggle more once the Four Cardinal Beasts array was completed to the point that it could be activated. As such, there was no reason for her to hold back her own strength when it would only lead to a worse outcome for herself.
The Great Family members quickly began to resist the command, but as the power of the Absolute was applied to it, without even mentioning everything else that she had added to the many beams to guarantee their effect, they found that their feet were still slowly dragged towards the spatial tear. Some of those that had gotten into a fight with the Patriarchs at the sides were further away and thus less affected, forcing her to make a decision.
On one hand, she could attempt to bring all of them out and thus risk not only the Kong Prison Realm, but the potential success of her long-term plans as a whole. On the other, it was possible that by leaving behind a number of them, they would not only be able to track down their position once again and use them to return to the Kong Prison Realm, but that their current numbers could overpower the Patriarchs that were protecting the spatial realm and thus get to rampage around the place without anyone strong enough to stop them, which would be entirely unacceptable as well. There were only five that were too far for her to push into the spatial tear, which was what informed her final decision.
Via a spiritual will transmission, she spoke to the Patriarchs, “Everyone, take down the Great Family members you are currently fighting no matter what. I will take this outside.”
She raised her palm and manifested a Yang Elysian Storm, imbuing it with everything she had as she threw it at the Greats, targeting the weakest and least certain part of their arrangement, simultaneously leaping in and exploding with all of her physique energy as she punched out at the closest set of anchors to her.
Perhaps due to having experienced some of the damage that the Elysian-type techniques could deal to them, they thought about moving to some other arrangement to deal with it, but the punch she leapt in with completely stopped their plans. It was not much more powerful than the previous strike caused by her Obliteration beams colliding, but what made the difference was that it was a purely physical strike empowered with the strongest physique abilities she had collected, and so the arrangement that had been switched to for the sake of opposing her Obliteration energy and preventing their pull into the spatial tear was entirely unsuitable for the attack that she had released next, causing it to crash into them directly.
They were pushed by several metres, with a few being brought to the very brink of the spatial tear through which they had entered.
“Ascendant! You continue to mess with things that you do not understand! This realm is ours, and your theft of it merely deprives the world of a valuable environment in which the vilest criminals can be held. Even if you are among them, you must understand the selfish nature of your actions!”
“Selfish? I am selfish for not wishing the world to dry up of planar energy and die while you sit on its corpse and praise yourselves to the heavens? Fuck off!” she snapped, reaching out once more and exclaiming at the loudest volume and with the most conviction that she was able to muster when her continuous use of the Dao of Law kept eroding her lungs, “CONVERSION!”
All of the sudden, the air rich in planar energy twisted and transformed into silver and crimson, with the colour being most distinct around the mirage-like anchors surrounding the Great Family members. The energy that had kept both of them going was rapidly changed into killing intent and spiritual will at the same time, naturally splitting to the left and right in the same manner that it had when the Kong Prison Realm had applied this Law to every single part of the realm so that the energy of the Beast could be converted into something usable to humans.
This was the last straw as more than half of the force was suddenly pushed out of the prison realm and through the layer of white light, into which Wei Yi quickly followed them, but the others somehow stayed in place and managed to escape the binging of the Dao of Law once she departed the realm.
At the same time, the ground between them lit up with four distinct colours, piercing through the ground to form a tall barrier within which four different breaths looked to flow, creating an incredible restriction for anyone attempting to intrude. The feathers of a phoenix, the fur of a tiger, the azure scales of a dragon and the black shell of a tortoise could all be seen within that layer of light, and they blocked up the enormous tear within the open air and completely separated the Kong Prison Realm from the space that had been used to intrude into it. Furthermore, with every moment that they existed, the four features grew more powerful and more distinct, as if they were coming alive right before their eyes.
The Greats that had been pushed out would not be able to return with ease, but this did not apply to the thirteen that had managed to remain inside, alongside the five that had been fighting with the Patriarchs already. While the original number would have been one that did not pose too significant a threat to them, the sudden increase to eighteen completely threw the battle into the favour of the Greats.
Just as with anything in their favour, this was not missed by the Greats, who quickly looked back into the outside world with a confident, cocky grin that made her want to punch them in the face.
However, that desire was dulled- no, more like partially delayed, by the sudden appearance of a figure floating near the middle of the Kong Prison Realm. It was shrouded in soft white light, hiding its features entirely, but what could not be hidden was an aura of great strength and authority that surrounded it, making even the slightest movement suddenly appear to be enormous and staggering. The figure raised a hand and looked to reach for something in the air, at which point, all of a sudden, the Four Cardinal Beasts array burst into completion.
Four beasts emerged from the cardinal directions of the Kong Prison Realm, white from the north, azure from the east, vermillion from the west and black from the south, and all of them rushed towards the group of the Great Family members, crashing into them and rapidly tearing through the anchors that surrounded them, having an easier time now due to the disruption of their defensive formation.
Wei Yi and the figure floating in the air seemed to lock eyes for a moment, as if the latter wished to assure her.
She was unable to detect a single thing about his identity and ability, but she could tell that the Four Cardinal Beasts were incredibly effective against the Greats, and so she turned around to face the rest of their forces, glancing back to confirm that everything was still going well. Somehow, even though she was getting aid from someone – or possibly even something – that she did not know nor understand, there was no hint of the Kong Prison Realm falling to those who had previously controlled it, allowing her to put her focus on those in front of her.
“You are more powerful than I had expected, Ascendant.”
“And you look to have relied solely on that lot to have the success that you currently have. Never thought to consider their flaws and attempt to alleviate them via means other than those solely provided by the otherworldly demons?” Wei Yi asked, looking to a small group of people that did not look to belong in the district at all, wearing clothing that she was able to recognise as being rather similar to what the otherworldly demons recognised as ‘modern’ clothing, “By the way, you lot, don’t know if you’ve heard, but that’s a general term not intended to label you as villainous. You merely impact the world greatly with a single action, often without knowing it, and I consider that to be rather dangerous given the power that some of you end up possessing.”
“W-We did get told about that, but… uh…” the man that replied quickly turned away, before turning all the way to face away from her as he tried to make himself look as small as possible.
Most of his otherworldly companions joined him, although a few were able to keep looking straight and facing her without making themselves any smaller. From a brief glance at them, she was aware that they had a higher cultivation and must have encountered some danger prior to ending up in the district, as they would not endure her gaze so easily.
“There were flaws, but I had truly underestimated the full abilities of those from beyond the district. You have impressed me, Ascendant, and your fellow… Arbiters, did you call them? Yes, they have done well enough too.”
“Don’t pretend that all of this is under your control, Patriarch. This is not, and you don’t even know how I destroyed that overlord orb. As such, skip all of this arbitrary chatter and tell me whether you will bring me to the spatial stabilisation point and contribute what you have to reunifying Yi City and opposing the Greats. Given their minimal presence here, and the fact that you are openly using otherworldly equipment, you must not be too keen on them either.”
“No, I am not ‘keen’ on the Great Families. That being said, your actions are reckless.”
“Oh, do stop already. Reckless? Your enormous fucking army was reckless, and you are lucky that I was present to stop it, otherwise countless people and talents would be slaughtered simply because you fail to look out of the figurative window onto the outside of your district.”
“I-”
“I’m not finished. You are not the first to call me reckless, but trust me, that is very much an understatement. I dare to oppose the Greats, I will fight the Primordial Deities if they ever awaken, and there are threats beyond the Planar Continents that you know little of. If they appear, I shall fight them as well, and unlike you, I will not allow people to sacrifice their minds simply because I need power!” she exclaimed, looking back to the otherworldly demons, “All of them have an azure light within their otherworldly gift that will eat away at their sanity. It must be removed.”
“And so we return to the topic of sacrifice-”
“Indeed, we do. I wish to attain something, so I will do what I must. To put it simply, leaving people with such a thing to affect their minds is in direct opposition to my goals, so if you are not happy with other explanations, consider this one,” she said, “I know that they have cultivated, which means that you have simply allowed people to begin to lose their minds and become threats to themselves and those around them simply because you wanted to be the one to prevail.”
“And you?”
“I am getting tired of these kinds of questions that ignore my words and merely try to flip thing around on me. That being said, if I could be sure that someone else would do exactly what I need them to, I would let them do it. Good enough for you?”
“… Indeed, I have been foolish. I will not continue this, then. You have given this more thought than I have, so any more will simply make a fool of me for no good reason,” the Ju Patriarch admitted, sighing and weakening his stance for a moment before promptly straightening his back and continuing, “You want the spatial stabilisation point, and the district does have a few. What will you give me?”
“Taking advantage of the fact that I did not wish to destroy the automatons?”
“Yes, I am. You are similarly taking advantage of the fact that I am not merely fighting for the sake of conflict, so I do not see any reason not to do so.”
“Aren’t you a clever one? I am glad that you have the time to bargain and debate when the entirety of the world is in danger of being completely drained of planar energy… but you know that, as does everyone in the district, but you think that this kind of thing is permissible, as do I. In fact, you would say that I would demand the exact same kind of thing in your position, wouldn’t you?” Wei Yi asked, prompting the Patriarch to nod.
“It looks like you are. We could be negotiating already, but you are instead preaching.”
“I was not wrong then. What do you want?”
“Resources, manpower, the connections formed by your gateways, and assistance with certain issues that the Ju District has been facing for some time. Assistance in the defence against the Free Tribes of the West, as they call themselves, that live up to the north and occasionally invade our territory.”
“Long list.”
“I could make it far longer. This is the bare minimum that I wish to discuss, and the bare minimum that our district requires from you.”
Wei Yi rolled her eyes, finding the confident stance with which he was speaking to be rather amusing. So far as she was able to tell, even the current Ping Patriarch was likely able to match him in terms of power, and so the current army would be able to defeat him and the automaton horde without much difficulty with enough time. Provided that she delayed for long enough with her words, as she had already been doing to a certain extent, she could recover all of her energy and make use of a powerful enough technique to clear everything in one go as the current conquering status of the district was rising with every moment of confidence on her part and failing on the part of the Ju Patriarch.
Still, she understood his behaviour, and might not have been too different had she lived a life akin to his own, so there was no point in reprimanding him, especially when everything he had spoken about so far would be provided to him even if he didn’t mention it.
“From everything that you have said, I-”
Her eyes suddenly widened as she nearly collapsed, clutching an area near her heart as an incredible pain surged throughout her entire body. It was nothing like the sequelae from abusing the Dao of Law, which she had long gotten used to, but instead something akin to damage to the soul, as if someone tore an enormous gash within it and was taking the opportunity to crawl inside.
Without any care for what it looked like to the others, she identified the source, and instantly appeared at a spot some distance away from their current negotiation grounds.
“What are you doing, Ascendant?”
“The Great Families are attacking. We will do all of this later, don’t you worry!” she replied, opening the gateway with a flick of her hand before pushing the gateway out to be as large as she could possibly make it.
This time, she was not afraid to display the interior of the Kong Prison Realm, for what had affected her could only be show to the others if she did this. Her seeming injury did not come from her own body, despite what it had felt like, but could instead be seen inside of the spatial realm in the form of an enormous tear within the starry and nebulae-filled sky, revealing an overpowering and sickly white light from which a small group emerged, strange fluctuations of light occurring around them.
Beside the sudden display of such a place, most gazes instantly locked onto that tear, and onto the people coming out from within, the task being made easier by the gateway being opened to the edge of the prison realm. The clothes of the people were sufficiently ordinary to not stand out on a casual glance, but when someone knew their identity, they immediately became a sign of that very identity that was only made more obvious by the presence of the mirages that hovered around them – or, in the eyes of the Ascendant, who had destroyed a number of such things before, the anchors that floated around every member of the Great Families.
“Your automaton army is going to be used for defence everywhere else!” she provided one last word to the Ju Patriarch before she moved all of the automatons to the edges of the Yi City Web’s territory around her other districts, then leapt into the prison realm, “Arbiters, with me!”
As she did so, she could feel the power of the spatial realm rise slightly from the new connection to her portion of the Yi City Web, and with it, all of the weapons brought it from the Ju District battlefield had enough energy in the air to be fired at a regular speed without needing to give them more than a minute to recover. Her own strength was slightly higher as well, but none of that mattered when the spatial realm was forcefully locked onto and the Greats looked to be coming from whatever domain they occupied.
“Yi Shi Ming, the Four Cardinal Beasts array-”
“Is not ready! It is not functioning at a proper level just yet!”
“How long do you need? I can’t beat all of them away if they bring even one of the seventh realm members into the area!”
“Two minutes at most! I should be able to seal off the space to a certain extent then!”
The Ascendant didn’t bother saying anything, as it would do nothing to benefit either of them. The spatial spirit needed to be able to focus, as she wasn’t immediately able to focus on everything without any issues with her attention just because she was no longer human, and she needed to get onto opposing the invading forces and ensuring that they wouldn’t have the chance to damage anything.
As such, she glanced to the various Patriarchs that entered and passed along a series of instructions, ideas and techniques for all of them that they could make use of to be more effective than they currently were. They were all impressive, but against the second generation of the Greats, their power was not going to be quite enough to fully push them back. Against the first generation… well, there was no point of even mentioning that. The Greats that were at the seventh realm were entirely invincible to the Patriarchs unless they were in their home district and making use of something like the array the previous Ping Patriarch had used.
“Hold them back, I will try to push them back out of the tear. Go!”
She didn’t bother to hold back her killing will state, either, so all of her killing intent was immediately manifested upon her body all the way from her left foot to the left side of her face. Some might have had an issue with it, but her words fortunately contained enough urgency for them to rush straight to the front lines a moment before Wei Yi did the exact same with her power of the spatial realm, appearing only a few metres away from the tear in space.
When she appeared, the Greats also saw her, and they instantly brought up their anchors to guard themselves against attack.
At the front of the invading team, she saw only the second generation members, amongst whom she noticed Luo Fu, Bai Chao and Ping Fu, who looked to be particularly unhappy with her appearance. The second one, Bai Chao, was calmest and stepped forward with a confident smile on his ugly face.
“So, this is where you were hiding-”
Before he had even the slightest chance to finish, the Titanic Conqueror was already up and throwing everything it had in their direction, while Wei Yi manifested her Obliteration energy at her hands and rushed into punching range, intending to amplify her attacks via her physical force and her mental energy at the same time, ensuring that damage was done to them.
The man looked surprised, but at the same time, all of the invaders so far arranged themselves into position and clapped their palms together, a pure planar energy surrounding them and quickly blocking her advance, even partially extinguishing the powerful blaze contained within her Obliteration energy. Their hands were only together for a moment, as the instant after, they all directed their attacks towards her, manifesting various beams and planar constructs that all charged right towards her, some colliding before any kind of barrier could be placed.
All of them fell upon the Armour Forming energy that enveloped her, bouncing off and leaving only their physical impacts to be afraid of, which promptly threw her into the ground and forced her to regain her footing.
“We seek to improve the world, so we would never stay idle, bastard!” Bai Chao exclaimed.
“Enough of your bullshit! Die already!” she ignored their words as she called upon the power of her anchor and detonated a series of her searing marks, empowering the attacks of the Titanic Conqueror and her together. The former threw out several chunks of ice seeped with poison that crashed upon the area where the Greats stood, filling the ground beneath them with runes that brimmed with Obliteration energy, and gave her room to condense a more recent technique.
Countless railgun rails formed all around them, igniting from the sheer amount of energy forced into them as she wanted to make sure that they would not get out alive.
They shot into the arrangement of the Greats, but before all of that could hit, a flaming hand burst out through the spatial tear and shielded the group with seemingly no effort at all, with every collision exposing a trace of metal underneath that only seemed to be tempered by the strikes. It was as if the hand was merely taking advantage of her attacks, with them having no threat to it at all and thus being something that was only advantageous to it. Given the trace of many anchors and the obvious support of the Great Families, there was no question of which kind of person was responsible for the hand, even if the exact identity was unclear.
Given the strength of the hand, she had an idea of which generation it came from, but that was not a positive in the slightest. It meant that she had to hurry up and force the Greats out of the spatial realm as quickly as she possible could if she wanted to keep the Kong Prison Realm to herself.
‘And yet, all of this has used up a few seconds at most…’
The Patriarchs that fought on the side were only able to draw the attention of two second generation members each without endangering their lives. Even then, they were barely able to put a dent into the defences of those that had not taken position in the defensive technique that gave the Ascendant quite a bit of trouble. While they were able to occupy one another in this fashion, they were achieving very little.
As the hand receded, she made use of the fact that their current attacks weren’t quite enough to breach her defences to plant both feet firmly in the sand and channel the energy within her body that was barely able to recover after the previous battle into the world around her, manifesting the circle of Eclipse Ire. Within it, she embedded Obliteration energy, the concept her Dao, and even the concept of the Black Sun to a certain extent, limited by the fact that the technique was not quite compatible with the notion of destruction that was contained within the base technique.
While the Greats prepared their own techniques, the Ire circle quickly drew upon the energy into the Kong Prison Realm and grew, reaching the edge of the defensive field generated by the strange arrangement of the Great Family members. The moment that they came into contact, countless blackened crimson lightning bolts shot out from her body and locked onto that barrier.
Their collision did not destroy the defensive layer, doing very little to it, but the Great Family members visibly trembled when a number of the lightning bolts fell upon it. It had some effect, which was enough.
Since she was able to affect them, she naturally increased the quantity of energy she was pouring into the technique, causing the third and fourth circles to form rapidly, all while the phase of the moon within them grew. In the sky, a sun and moon appeared from within the distant cosmos, shining past all of the powerful nebulae and the other celestial bodies to appear close to the scene of the battle, at the very edge of the spatial tear that continued to let out sickening light from the world beyond. The sun and moon alike slowly shifted to shine upon the Greats, who shared a glance before shifting their position into some other arrangement.
However, the moment that they did so, she performed a motion with her right hand and forced a series of totems to rise out from the ground, amplified by her home ground advantage to be larger and capable of channelling even more energy throughout their structure. In all of them, she embedded her Obliteration technique, and made them all target the centre of the Great Family member arrangement the moment that it looked to be weakest due to their movements.
Thus, at that instant, multiple dozen blackened crimson beams met with the blast of moonlight and dawn light fired via her Eclipse Ire, the energies colliding with one another in an explosion of absolute destruction.
Naturally, she had applied the slight understanding she had attained from the collision of the overlord orb’s orange beam and her own Obliteration beam, but she did also incorporate a concept that she had observed from the Bai District’s strange space. The figure that wielded something akin to her own Obliteration energy had used a number of odd techniques, and from them, she was able to extract a few concepts that she promptly used to amplify the effect of every beam through one burst upon their intersection.
Somehow, even that wasn’t enough to breach the barrier that the Greats had set up, but the force was enough to knock them loose from their arrangement, giving her the perfect opportunity to point towards the spatial tear with her left hand and exclaim.
“Exit!”
Her Command of Law took effect instantly, causing the formation of her foes, and her own body alike, to be pushed towards the spatial tear from which they had emerged. To be sure that she got all of them, she did not bother restraining her power of Law and affected every single soul that she could, as she and the others could get out of wherever they ended up easily enough once the battle was over, but the Greats would struggle more once the Four Cardinal Beasts array was completed to the point that it could be activated. As such, there was no reason for her to hold back her own strength when it would only lead to a worse outcome for herself.
The Great Family members quickly began to resist the command, but as the power of the Absolute was applied to it, without even mentioning everything else that she had added to the many beams to guarantee their effect, they found that their feet were still slowly dragged towards the spatial tear. Some of those that had gotten into a fight with the Patriarchs at the sides were further away and thus less affected, forcing her to make a decision.
On one hand, she could attempt to bring all of them out and thus risk not only the Kong Prison Realm, but the potential success of her long-term plans as a whole. On the other, it was possible that by leaving behind a number of them, they would not only be able to track down their position once again and use them to return to the Kong Prison Realm, but that their current numbers could overpower the Patriarchs that were protecting the spatial realm and thus get to rampage around the place without anyone strong enough to stop them, which would be entirely unacceptable as well. There were only five that were too far for her to push into the spatial tear, which was what informed her final decision.
Via a spiritual will transmission, she spoke to the Patriarchs, “Everyone, take down the Great Family members you are currently fighting no matter what. I will take this outside.”
She raised her palm and manifested a Yang Elysian Storm, imbuing it with everything she had as she threw it at the Greats, targeting the weakest and least certain part of their arrangement, simultaneously leaping in and exploding with all of her physique energy as she punched out at the closest set of anchors to her.
Perhaps due to having experienced some of the damage that the Elysian-type techniques could deal to them, they thought about moving to some other arrangement to deal with it, but the punch she leapt in with completely stopped their plans. It was not much more powerful than the previous strike caused by her Obliteration beams colliding, but what made the difference was that it was a purely physical strike empowered with the strongest physique abilities she had collected, and so the arrangement that had been switched to for the sake of opposing her Obliteration energy and preventing their pull into the spatial tear was entirely unsuitable for the attack that she had released next, causing it to crash into them directly.
They were pushed by several metres, with a few being brought to the very brink of the spatial tear through which they had entered.
“Ascendant! You continue to mess with things that you do not understand! This realm is ours, and your theft of it merely deprives the world of a valuable environment in which the vilest criminals can be held. Even if you are among them, you must understand the selfish nature of your actions!”
“Selfish? I am selfish for not wishing the world to dry up of planar energy and die while you sit on its corpse and praise yourselves to the heavens? Fuck off!” she snapped, reaching out once more and exclaiming at the loudest volume and with the most conviction that she was able to muster when her continuous use of the Dao of Law kept eroding her lungs, “CONVERSION!”
All of the sudden, the air rich in planar energy twisted and transformed into silver and crimson, with the colour being most distinct around the mirage-like anchors surrounding the Great Family members. The energy that had kept both of them going was rapidly changed into killing intent and spiritual will at the same time, naturally splitting to the left and right in the same manner that it had when the Kong Prison Realm had applied this Law to every single part of the realm so that the energy of the Beast could be converted into something usable to humans.
This was the last straw as more than half of the force was suddenly pushed out of the prison realm and through the layer of white light, into which Wei Yi quickly followed them, but the others somehow stayed in place and managed to escape the binging of the Dao of Law once she departed the realm.
At the same time, the ground between them lit up with four distinct colours, piercing through the ground to form a tall barrier within which four different breaths looked to flow, creating an incredible restriction for anyone attempting to intrude. The feathers of a phoenix, the fur of a tiger, the azure scales of a dragon and the black shell of a tortoise could all be seen within that layer of light, and they blocked up the enormous tear within the open air and completely separated the Kong Prison Realm from the space that had been used to intrude into it. Furthermore, with every moment that they existed, the four features grew more powerful and more distinct, as if they were coming alive right before their eyes.
The Greats that had been pushed out would not be able to return with ease, but this did not apply to the thirteen that had managed to remain inside, alongside the five that had been fighting with the Patriarchs already. While the original number would have been one that did not pose too significant a threat to them, the sudden increase to eighteen completely threw the battle into the favour of the Greats.
Just as with anything in their favour, this was not missed by the Greats, who quickly looked back into the outside world with a confident, cocky grin that made her want to punch them in the face.
However, that desire was dulled- no, more like partially delayed, by the sudden appearance of a figure floating near the middle of the Kong Prison Realm. It was shrouded in soft white light, hiding its features entirely, but what could not be hidden was an aura of great strength and authority that surrounded it, making even the slightest movement suddenly appear to be enormous and staggering. The figure raised a hand and looked to reach for something in the air, at which point, all of a sudden, the Four Cardinal Beasts array burst into completion.
Four beasts emerged from the cardinal directions of the Kong Prison Realm, white from the north, azure from the east, vermillion from the west and black from the south, and all of them rushed towards the group of the Great Family members, crashing into them and rapidly tearing through the anchors that surrounded them, having an easier time now due to the disruption of their defensive formation.
Wei Yi and the figure floating in the air seemed to lock eyes for a moment, as if the latter wished to assure her.
She was unable to detect a single thing about his identity and ability, but she could tell that the Four Cardinal Beasts were incredibly effective against the Greats, and so she turned around to face the rest of their forces, glancing back to confirm that everything was still going well. Somehow, even though she was getting aid from someone – or possibly even something – that she did not know nor understand, there was no hint of the Kong Prison Realm falling to those who had previously controlled it, allowing her to put her focus on those in front of her.
